A number of laws of the Kyrgyz Republic provide certain privileges and guarantees for ethnic Kyrgyz. They are, for example, entitled to acquire residence permits through simplified procedures, receive special kairylman* status and obtain Kyrgyz citizenship. However, according to State agencies, these provisions are rarely implemented, and the status of kairylman is not granted. As the next chapter will show, there are other unresolved problems in the area of citizenship. Lack of an effective migration policy and adequate legal framework has left a considerable number of permanent Kyrgyz residents stateless or at risk of statelessness and therefore without official status or any documents of stateless persons. Categories of stateless persons identified during the survey are described in the following section. Despite new improved legislation, stateless persons have no access to procedures to acquire citizenship, mainly because the authorities accept applications for acquisition of citizenship only from persons possessing valid passports, in spite of the fact that such a requirement is not mentioned in the Law On Citizenship or in the Presidential Decree elaborating the procedures. Furthermore, no effective mechanism has been developed so far to legalize stateless persons and grant them Kyrgyz citizenship. * Kairylman is a foreign citizen or a person without citizenship of ethnic Kyrgyz origin who returns to the Kyrgyz Republic. 14 The Situation of Stateless Persons in the Kyrgyz Republic: Findings of Surveys Commissioned by the UNHCR